Tim Gunn on the Power of Staying True to Your Vision

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Business of Fashion Podcast – "Tim Gunn on the Power of Staying True to Your Vision"

Release Date: January 24, 2025

Introduction

In this compelling episode of The Business of Fashion Podcast, host Imran Ahmed engages in a heartfelt and insightful conversation with fashion icon Tim Gunn. Best known for his role as a mentor on television's Project Runway, Gunn delves deep into his personal journey, professional experiences, and his profound perspectives on the evolving fashion industry. The discussion spans Gunn's early life challenges, his transition from artist to educator, his pivotal role at Parsons School of Design, and his reflections on mentorship and the future of fashion.

Early Life and Overcoming Adversity

Tim Gunn opens up about his formative years in Washington, D.C., marked by significant personal struggles. As an introverted and academically inclined child, Gunn faced bullying that left him "bloodied and bruised" from schoolyard confrontations.

"I was the kid everybody picked on. I stood out for all the wrong reasons in terms of a social dynamic."
— Tim Gunn [03:40]

Despite these hardships, Gunn emphasizes the role these experiences played in building his resilience and shaping his empathetic approach to mentoring.

"Life is a huge collaboration. We need other people. We're not intended to be solos..."
— Tim Gunn [00:53]

Creative Pursuits and Educational Journey

Gunn's innate creativity found expression through his love for drawing, architecture, and storytelling. Initially pursuing a major in architecture, he faced challenges with the traditional, labor-intensive methods of design pre-digital era, leading him to switch to literature.

"Creativity is a catalyst for being curious about the world. And I don't think there's anything better than curiosity."
— Tim Gunn [06:31]

His passion for art and design ultimately drew him back to academia, where a serendipitous summer class at the Corcoran Gallery of Art ignited his desire to return to school full-time. This decision set the stage for his eventual role in shaping fashion education.

Transition to Teaching and Leadership at Parsons

Gunn recounts his appointment at Parsons School of Design, where he quickly rose to the position of Associate Dean. His tenure was marked by significant curriculum overhauls aimed at modernizing and broadening the scope of fashion education.

"The curriculum had not changed since 1952. It is now the year 2000. 48 years of inertia."
— Tim Gunn [21:35]

Faced with resistance from faculty accustomed to traditional methods, Gunn implemented sweeping changes to foster independence and innovation among students, emphasizing the importance of business education alongside creative design.

Involvement with Project Runway

The conversation transitions to Gunn's unexpected foray into television. Initially approached as a consultant for Project Runway, Gunn's role evolved organically, leading to his iconic presence on the show. He shares the behind-the-scenes challenges of adapting his mentorship style to a televised format.

"We hate drama. We do everything possible to dilute it, to exterminate it, because when there's enough stress in that workroom without the drama..."
— Tim Gunn [30:35]

Gunn highlights the show's integrity and his commitment to nurturing designers without succumbing to manufactured drama, ensuring that the focus remains on creativity and excellence.

Reflections on the Fashion Industry

Gunn offers a critical examination of the current state of the fashion industry, addressing issues such as the dominance of mega brands, the unsustainable nature of fast fashion, and the stagnation of traditional fashion shows.

"The fashion world, in my opinion, is a bit of a mess."
— Tim Gunn [36:30]

He advocates for sustainability and innovation, lamenting the lack of support for emerging designers and the industry's reluctance to evolve its presentation methods.

"How do we view fashion? How do we experience it, and what are the venues?"
— Tim Gunn [36:30]

Mentorship and Advice

Towards the episode's conclusion, Gunn imparts valuable advice for individuals facing personal and professional challenges. Reflecting on his own experiences with bullying and imposter syndrome, he emphasizes the importance of seeking support and staying true to one's creative vision.

"Find someone you can speak to and share your thoughts with it. Maybe a teacher... It gets better. Things get better."
— Tim Gunn [49:46]

He underscores the significance of evolving one's voice and maintaining authenticity amidst external pressures, encouraging listeners to embrace their unique perspectives.

Conclusion

Imran Ahmed and Tim Gunn wrap up their enriching dialogue by acknowledging the enduring impact of Gunn's mentorship on aspiring designers and the broader fashion community. Gunn's candid reflections offer both inspiration and critical insights, making this episode a must-listen for fashion professionals and enthusiasts alike.

"It's critically important to know what it is you have to say and to stay true to yourself to say it."
— Tim Gunn [49:46]

Notable Quotes

• "Life is a huge collaboration. We need other people. We're not intended to be solos..." — Tim Gunn [00:53]
• "Creativity is a catalyst for being curious about the world. And I don't think there's anything better than curiosity." — Tim Gunn [06:31]
• "The curriculum had not changed since 1952. It is now the year 2000. 48 years of inertia." — Tim Gunn [21:35]
• "We hate drama. We do everything possible to dilute it, to exterminate it, because when there's enough stress in that workroom without the drama..." — Tim Gunn [30:35]
• "The fashion world, in my opinion, is a bit of a mess." — Tim Gunn [36:30]
• "How do we view fashion? How do we experience it, and what are the venues?" — Tim Gunn [36:30]
• "Find someone you can speak to and share your thoughts with it. Maybe a teacher... It gets better. Things get better." — Tim Gunn [49:46]
• "It's critically important to know what it is you have to say and to stay true to yourself to say it." — Tim Gunn [49:46]

Final Thoughts

Tim Gunn's narrative is a testament to the power of perseverance, mentorship, and authentic self-expression. His insights not only shed light on the intricacies of the fashion industry but also offer universal lessons on overcoming adversity and fostering creativity. This episode serves as both an inspiring biography and a thoughtful critique of contemporary fashion dynamics.

Transcript

[Imran Ahmed]

Foreign. Hi, this is Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Business of Fashion. Welcome to the BoF Podcast. It's Friday, January 24th. Tim Gunn is best known as the wise, empathetic mentor on television's Project Runway. But before he found himself guiding the next generation of designers on screen, he spent time teaching and shaping the fashion curriculum at Parsons, where he helped nurture some of the most influential names in American fashion. His journey began in Washington, D.C. where early struggles with bullying and a desire to understand his own creativity led him toward mentoring and educating others. Now, as the fashion industry grapples with change on multiple fronts, Tim offers his unique perspective on what it really takes to succeed today in fashion and in life.

[Tim Gunn]

Life is a huge collaboration. We need other people. We're not intended to be solos, and no one should think, oh, I can deal with this and solve this myself. When it comes to the fashion industry, it's so critically important to know what it is you have to say and to stay true to yourself to say it.

[Imran Ahmed]

This week on the BoF podcast, Tim opens up about how his early trials shaped his remarkable career, why he left his art practice behind to focus on teaching and mentors, and how he sees the future of American fashion. Here's Tim Gunn on the BoF podcast. Tim Gunn, thank you for joining me on the BoF podcast. How are you today?

[Tim Gunn]

I'm very well, Imran, and I'm honored to be with you. Thank you for having me.

[Imran Ahmed]

It's such a pleasure to speak with you. You and I have never met in person, but I feel like I kind of already know you because I watched Project Runway for so many years before I had anything to do with the fashion industry. So this is a real pleasure. And of course, everyone knows you from Project Runway, but I always like to start these conversations going way back, and I wanted to understand a bit about Tim Gunn growing up in Washington, D.C. and kind of what you were like as someone, a young person.

[Tim Gunn]

Well, where do I begin? I was an introvert, certainly. And a nerd, a bookworm. I had a real disdain for team sports, though I will say I ended up being a fairly accomplished competitive swimmer. And my childhood was difficult. I'll just come right out and say it. But I will also add, all these experiences make us who we are, and I wouldn't change for anything. When people ask, what would you change in your life? How could you possibly do that without altering everything else that would have followed? So I have zero complaints. It's interesting, though. The one thing I've been thinking about in my rather elderly age is when I consider my father, with whom I was not at all close. I was constantly coming home from school bloody and bruised, and my father was this big, macho FBI agent. And upon reflection, I wonder, why didn't he ever teach me how to fight? It seems really peculiar, but he didn't.

[Imran Ahmed]

Tim, of course, I read a little bit about your experience growing up and kind of discovering who you were and who you are. But when you say you were coming back from school bloodied and bruised, why was that? I guess there was some bullying happening at school.

[Tim Gunn]

Oh, well, I was the kid everybody picked on. And I have to say, in my own way, I asked for it. I stood out for all the wrong reasons in terms of a social dynamic, but it was basically the jocks beating up on the nerds. And I had a couple of nerd friends, so I wasn't the only one. But it was with a good deal of. Well, I shouldn't say a good deal of frequency in my memory was with a good deal of frequency. It may not have been that often, but these are. Are things you don't forget.

[Imran Ahmed]

Yeah, but you said that you don't want or wish to change anything that happened when you were growing up. I mean, what do you think that kind of experience gave you in terms of resilience or in terms of the way your life ended up developing?

[Tim Gunn]

Well, in a way, it caused me to seek refuge and avoid conflict at all costs and just to really to protect myself. And it's interesting, I don't reflect about it often, but when I do, some of the pain comes back.

[Imran Ahmed]

While all of this is happening, you clearly discovered that you were a creative person. Can you talk to us a little bit about your creative pursuits growing up? And like, where did the fashion thing or the design thing or the creativity thing, like, where did that come from?

[Tim Gunn]

Well, the fashion aspect was really thrust upon me, and I'll tell you about that when we get to that juncture. But the creativity was always in me. I loved drawing, I loved architecture. My mother used to tell people that she knew that I was special in quotes when at the age of nine, we visited Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home in Charlottesville, Virginia, and. And I bought a book of Thomas Jefferson's architectural drawings. She said, I knew there was something up. And when Lego came out in the 1950s, when I was little, I used all my allowance money to buy Lego. And in those days, they were just anonymous bricks. You didn't know what to do with them other than to be creative. And they were literally just bricks. I remember when windows came out and I was ecstatic. And then doors and then roof tiles. I was part of the whole evolution of Lego. So it was just extremely satisfying for me. And I was an avid reader as well, and I wrote my own stories. And I've just always been a creative person and I am proud of that. And I think creativity is a catalyst for being curious about the world. And I don't think there's anything better than curiosity.

[Imran Ahmed]

So where did that curiosity take you in terms of what you decided to pursue in the form of education?

[Tim Gunn]

Well, it took me to a major in architecture. Initially, I only lasted a year, if it was even that. I think I left part of the way through the second semester because I absolutely hated it. This was my dream, to study architecture. And I thought, I'm going to end up doing wiring and plumbing specs for gas stations. And also in those days, it was before we had Computer Aided Design. I mean, well, before you had to take a stylus, take a bottle of India ink and an eyedropper and drop the ink into the stylus and then work on this large piece of vellum to make your presentation drawings. And if you were to have an error, if something were to bleed, you had to start all over again. And these presentation drawings would take 20 hours at the minimum, 60 or 70 at the most. And imagine hour 69 into this and the pen bleeds. And I thought, this is the quickest way to a mental breakdown. I just, I can't do this. So then I studied literature. And I'm torn about how to talk about it because on the one hand, I loved it and it introduced me to so many wonderful writers and people I would never have discovered on my own, like James Agee. On the other hand, I thought it was very limiting. So when I graduated from college and I was working painting houses, frankly, and I was a museum nut, and growing up in Washington, one of my favorite museums was a museum that actually no longer exists, the Corcoran Gallery of Art. It was the finest collection of 19th century painting and sculpture in the nation. And the Corcoran had a museum school. So I took a summer class in drawing. And I don't believe at that particular time I'd ever felt more fulfilled, I'd ever felt so satisfied with what I was doing, who I am. And even though the outcomes weren't that great, it was the whole idea that the answer to whatever we were doing in this class, the answer was not in the back of the book it was within each of us as individuals and how we choose to see the world. So then I had the brazen idea of going back to school full time and getting a degree. And my initial thought was that I wanted to be a painter. And there was a foundation program, actually two years of a foundation program where you studied everything from two and three dimensional design to painting and drawing and sculpture. And I loved it. So year three, I have to choose a major. And my mentor and advisor said, I really want you to explore three dimensional thinking. Everything you're doing is two dimensional. And Imran, to be perfectly honest, I wasn't a good painter. I just wasn't. But I loved the activity, I loved the act of doing it. So my mentor said, I'm making you take this three dimensional design class, not as a major, but you need to take this class. And I resisted and resisted and I ended up absolutely loving it. And the work that I was doing was work that I really felt proud of, that I felt was good, that it was really a return to architecture because I ended up majoring in sculpture. But I was using paper and illustration board as my medium and everything was very architectural. And after I graduated, I supported myself by making architectural models for three firms in Washington D.C. so it's interesting how things come around in a modified way and it's interesting how those little seeds that are planted that you're not aware are actually going to grow into something such as lego at age 7, end up really informing the rest of your life. So while building these architectural models, which I also loved, but it wasn't very lucrative, the mentor and advisor I mentioned earlier, Rhona Slade, who was Welsh by the way, she contacted me to say, I'm teaching a pre college summer class for high school students and I'd like you to be my teaching assistant. Well, I would have done anything for Rona. So within a nanosecond I was there. I'm with you, I'm here, let's do it. And I loved it, every second of it. And part of what I loved was being with her all day. It was a six hour class, five days a week for four weeks. So that ended or concluded, I should say. It's a more positive word. And Rona contacted me to say, I just had a faculty member drop out, someone who teaches three dimensional, designed to foundation students to freshmen, and I'd like you to do it. And of course I said yes. I was deeply flattered, but I was not prepared for the anxiety that it would trigger. And that first week of class. Every single day I would throw up in the school parking lot and I would have to brace myself against one of the walls of the studio because my knees were shaking so badly, I thought I was going to topple over. And during that week, I was rehearsing how to get out of this. By rehearsing, I mean the conversation that I had to have with Rona. And I braced myself and went to my appointment with her and told her I confessed everything. And she sat there on the other side of her desk, stoically, unemotionally, whereas I'm a wreck. And I said, I just can't go on like this. She replied, well, I trust that this will either kill you or cure you, and I'm counting on the latter. Good day. I thought, oh, no, I've got to go back and do this all over again.

[Imran Ahmed]

But Tim, I don't understand. Like, what was. Where was that anxiety coming from? Like, what was making you so nervous?

[Tim Gunn]

Well, it was a number of things. And when I reflected upon it, what it really was was a kind of imposter syndrome. I felt, I don't really know what I'm doing. I don't know how to respond to many of these questions. And I was sort of making things up as I went. And it was just. I felt as though I was flying by the seat of my pants at 120 miles an hour. And it was just deeply unsettling. So when Rona refused to let me leave and I had to come to terms with making this work, I realized, why am I putting all this pressure on myself? I don't need to be the answer person. I can turn it back on the students and say, that's a great question. I want each of you to research this, and I want you to come back with an answer you think no one else will have. I've used that method for 32 years of teaching. Turn it back on the students, make them do the heavy lifting. Why do I feel like I have to be the automaton computer? I don't, and I can't be. I mean, it's just. It's entirely too much pressure. So for me, that was a kind of epiphany about pedagogy in the classroom. And it worked for me.

[Imran Ahmed]

Was this the moment? Or maybe that's a leading question, but I'll ask it anyway. Like, what's this?

[Tim Gunn]

Ask a leading question. I love it.

[Imran Ahmed]

Well, was this the moment where you. I mean, it feels to me, based on the way you're talking and based on the research I've done and having read a little bit about you, that, you know, teaching and mentoring really became your life's calling. I mean, you've done it in all sorts of different contexts. But was this the moment when you really realized that actually, this is what you're meant to do, which is to, like, work with other people to help them discover their talents? And.

[Tim Gunn]

Well, it's. It's interesting. It all happened within the first two years of beginning to teach, because I was still. I had a studio that I shared with a dear friend, Molly, and I was gone during the teaching. Well, I taught five days a week, so I was gone during the day, and I would be in the studio at night. And I don't know how far to get into this because I don't want you to think I'm nuts.

[Imran Ahmed]

I love it. You go as deep as you want to go.

[Tim Gunn]

I went to a psychic, okay? Her name, Jean MacArthur, she was the real thing. Supposedly, she was a consultant to NASA, to the FBI and the CIA. And interestingly, she spent three months in Washington, three months in New York, three months in London. And I don't remember where the other three months were. But Molly's mentor, a psychologist named Pat, had seen her, and she said it was an extraordinary experience, and the two of you should go, you know, separate appointments, of course. And it was 1977, and she was $50 for an hour, for 45 minutes. So that was expensive then. So Molly went in ahead of me. Molly came out looking ashen, looking really shaken. I went in, and I came out thinking, what a charlatan. Who is this person? There's nothing that she said to me that was even remotely enlightening.

[Imran Ahmed]

What did she say?

[Tim Gunn]

Well, she told me that I would leave my art career or my career as an artist on the shelf and move on from it. And I thought, that's ridiculous. This is my whole life that's not gonna happen. Molly and I had a banter consistently about prior lives, about who we may have been. And Jean MacArthur said to me, I don't believe in talking about prior lives, but I have to tell you this. She said, I've never met a new soul, she said, until now. And I thought, what? I'm not a new soul. But then later, piecing things together, and there were other things. I know what this whole session could be about Jean MacArthur. But upon reflection, that new soul aspect explains a lot about my operating or navigating the world with this level of naivete and my openness to so many things where I ended up getting sort of slapped back and I did put my art on the shelf. After two years of teaching, I thought, I feel so fulfilled and so sated through the teaching process, I don't need to make the work. And for the following year I was apologetic about it. And then I thought, why am I apologizing? This is what I love doing and I'm just going to keep doing it.

[Imran Ahmed]

We'll be right back with more on the BoF podcast.

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[Imran Ahmed]

So earlier you said that the fashion thing was thrust upon you. Like, how did that happen then? Tell me about where that fits into this amazing story.

[Tim Gunn]

I was offered a position at Parsons School of Design in New York, and I never intended to leave Washington. I was perfectly happy. This all fits into one of my adages, which is things happen for a reason. I was in a long term relationship with a man I was madly in love with and it was for me. It was a monogamous relationship and it was the early 1980s. It's the advent of AIDS. And this fabulous man said to me one night when we were watching MASH in bed, he said, I'm really tired of you and I don't have the patience for you anymore.

[Imran Ahmed]

Oh, wow.

[Tim Gunn]

I was devastated. Devastated. Later, I was angry because I thought. Because he confessed he'd been sleeping around a lot. And I thought, well, he could have given me a death sentence. Thank God he didn't. But the point of this is that when I was still in this fabulous relationship and loving my job at the Corcoran and being thrilled with all, all of it, Parsons had called and offered me a position. And I said, thank you, but no thanks. So fast forward a year. It's July of 1983. They call again. Tim, you're still on our in our mind, and we really like you to join us here. So all this hell had broken loose and I said, I'll come. Well, I mean, I needed to interview. I said, I'll be there tomorrow. And two weeks later, I was moving to New York.

[Imran Ahmed]

Wow.

[Tim Gunn]

So the point of this is simply to set up that I was a teacher at Parsons and I was an administrator. And eventually I was promoted to the. To the role of associate dean. So I was really number two at Parsons. I was a Mr. Fix It. So I was sent into departments that were in trouble. I did a lot of curriculum creating and revisions. I worked with our affiliate programs abroad, which there were many. But basically I was there to untangle messes. And there were a lot of messes. I used to call myself the academic Pooper scooper. And I would say, this place needs to stop pooping so much. So in the capacity of pooper scooper, the fashion department was in a moment of crisis. It had been through three department chairs in less than a year. And I was sent in to sort of help hold it together while we searched for a department chair. I had been there for three months and I wrote a State of the Union to the dean saying, this place is hemorrhaging. This isn't just a quick fix, and it's not a matter of someone new coming in and creating a solution to this. This has got to be completely turned around. I was truly horrified because this department was the jewel in the Parsons crown. It was the thing we were most proud of. The alumni were the most famous. Everybody loved it. And I said, well, you know, it's a bit like the monkeys and the typewriters. You give a a thousand monkeys a thousand typewriters for a thousand years, and someone's going to Write the world's greatest novel. And it was the same way with this program. Get this. The curriculum had not changed since 1952. It is now the year 2000. 48 years of inertia. No computers, no fashion history. What we don't want the students to be influenced. How can you not teach students the history of their discipline? I mean, this is irresponsible. I was completely and totally horrified. And during that first year, I mean, I didn't know it was going to be a year. The dean extended the three month stint to a year. I mean, there was nothing I could do other than observe and ask a lot of questions. Because the budget set, the curriculum set, faculty are hired, their contracts. What can I do other than study up about what needs to happen? So the following year, we implemented great, sweeping changes. Huge. And I needed a buy in from the students about what we were doing. And I have to say too, I think one of my strengths in this role was that I'm not a fashion designer. I wasn't educated in fashion. So my goal was to prepare students to lead the industry and to hold up standards of quality, taste and style within the department. I didn't have an axe to grind. I didn't have a pedagogy to follow. I just. I cared about quality and equity. And there was another aspect that really just bugged me every day. And that aspect was that the faculty always wanted to get rid of the students they felt were struggling. Get rid of them, let's fail them. The curriculum was so narrowly defined that unless you could do certain things really well, the department wasn't interested in you. One of my goals was to broaden what the department was offering, including business education, I have to say. Not that we were going to make fashion designers into business experts, but they needed to know about the business of fashion. It was a responsibility that the department had to them. So buy in from the students was fairly easy until we implemented the curriculum. And they realized how much more independence they had. And it made them very nervous because the former curriculum was all about being totally and wholly dependent upon the faculty. You couldn't do anything without faculty approval. And I thought, these students are incredibly talented and bright. We need to let them fly and see where it takes them. So the first two years of the new curriculum were really tough. And there was a lot of backlash, including a call for my resignation twice. And thanks to the wonderful dean who fully supported me. I push through all this and we came out in a much, much better place. In a place that I'm still proud of. I have no idea what the department is doing today. I haven't been there since 2007. But that is how the Project Runway producers found me. They were talking to people in the industry about what they needed to do because they weren't from the fashion industry either. And there were a lot of people who said, you should talk to Tim Gunn. You should see what he did at Parsons and see what happens. So they called me, it was January of 2004, and they told me what they wanted to do. And I said, fashion reality. I said, this industry has enough trouble without that. And I said, I'm really. I'm not interested in speaking with you. Thank you. And they said, well, give us 10 minutes, that's all we need. So thank God for Google. I googled them, the producers, and found out that they were the project green light producers. So if you know that show, it's about filmmaking and had a huge amount of integrity and seriousness. So I thought, well, this could be interesting. So they piqued my curiosity. I was deeply interested. And then I didn't hear from them for months and it completely left my head. I thought, well, they found someone else, or maybe they're not doing the show. And then they reached out and they said, we really want you to be. Well, the role was consultant. My role in the show didn't exist. It was in no one's vocabulary. So I became their consultant, unpaid, just contextually. And we moved forward. And I will add, I mean, people know Parsons because of the show. The show was never intended to be shot at Parsons. We were shooting in an apartment building where the. Where the designers were staying. It was a big loft space. And the budget people for the show said, we don't have the budget to outfit this. This can't happen. So I said to everyone, well, you only know Parsons from my office. Let's go over and look at it. Because you were taping in August, summer school was over, the fall semester was. Had not. Was not going to begin yet. And let's look at it. So that's how the show landed at Parsons. It was never intended to be there. And of course, we know that it stayed there for a long time.

[Imran Ahmed]

It stayed for a very long time. I mean, taking. I can really understand how your natural inclination for mentorship and kind of teaching translated to tv, but there must have been some other challenging elements of doing that in front of a camera. Did that feel weird?

[Tim Gunn]

Well, no one ever said, you're going to be the mentor to the designers. What the producer said was go in there and ask them what they're doing, because they were quite correct. No one was going to speak. They were just going to work. So by sending me in to probe, they were assured of some conversation. And I was very aware of the camera placement. There was one on me, there was one on the designer. And I thought, I'm never going to be in the show, and I have no ego about these things. So as long as they have the designer responding to me, no one needs to see me and no one needs to hear my voice. It's just the designer talking to the camera. So accordingly, I didn't go to the premiere of the show, and I didn't go because I thought, if I'm in the show, I have no. Well, first of all, I have no idea how the show was even going to be cut and portrayed. I mean, it could have been sexual antics in the Atlas Apartments. I don't know, or I didn't know. And if I'm in the show, I don't know how I'm gonna come off. And if I'm not in the show and I'm at this premiere, I'm gonna feel a little humiliated.

[Imran Ahmed]

What was your reaction when you saw the first season? I mean, because you became such a figure in that show, a key character.

[Tim Gunn]

I don't really recall. I will tell you, Imran, I have a hard time looking at myself and listening to myself. And most seasons of Project Runway, of course, I was there to help create them, but I've never seen them because it makes me very uncomfortable. So the quality and the integrity and the seriousness of the show were a huge relief for me because the producers and the editors weren't performing any machinations to twist things around. And I will also add, and I'm very proud of this about the show, we hate drama. We do everything possible to dilute it, to exterminate it, because when there's enough stress in that workroom without the drama. So when there's additional drama, the designers just don't do their best work. And all of us, we're only concerned with that, that they do really outstanding work. But as a mentor, at least in my manner of mentorship, I want to nurture, cultivate, cheerlead, but not be at all responsible for the designer's work. When people would ask me, do you feel really bad when someone goes home, as though it's something that you did or didn't do? I said, well, I'm not happy that they've gone home. I'm usually not happy. Sometimes I am. But I said I accept no margin of praise. When they succeed, if they win, I don't say, oh, Tim, you did a really great job. It's their work. And I would say to them all the time, the decision making process you own, I'm here to give you some feedback. But in the end, you have to make this decision or decisions. And I would say the same thing when they would be second guessing or third guessing what the judges may say. You can't do that because you could be wrong. And then you've completely compromised what you wanted to do, because you're anticipating what Nina Garcia wants. It has to be you, and you have to be front and center in all of this. And then you accept responsibility for a failure or a success. And we learn from it and we move on. But it wasn't an easy transition from teacher to mentor.

[Imran Ahmed]

To what extent, Tim, do you think the situation created in that workroom and in that show concept adequately reflected the way the fashion business really works? Like, you know, at some point, you. You embedded yourself or found yourself in a role at Liz Claiborne in the. In the kind of real fashion business. Like when you look at the Project Runway scenario that's created for television and then the fashion industry as it really existed when you were at Liz Claiborne, like, what was similar and what was different?

[Tim Gunn]

Well, Project Runway at its inception was seminal, I believe, and it was a product of its time in that. And you know this better than I am sure I'll speak for American fashion. Up through the 1980s, it was a very narrowly defined aesthetic swath. It was Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, basically. And then we enter the 90s, and American fashion is thrown into this upheaval, and it doesn't know what it is. And when it begins to coagulate in the later part of the 90s, suddenly it's a very different playing field. Here it is one that is not only willing to, but eager to nurture and cultivate young entrepreneurial designers. And Project Runway epitomized that. However, if you look at it within the larger rubric of fashion, Project Runway is a sample room. That's what it is. At Liz Claiborne, we had a sample room for almost every brand, and there were 48 brands at one point. So they're making clothes, and then it's the merchants, and, well, it's the retail experts and the marketing people, and, well, you know, it's supply chain, it's sourcing and manufacturing, and there's so many aspects, and I will also say, Heidi and I, my dear fabulous Heidi. We were eager to put more into Runway as Runway matured because the show ran for with us for 16 seasons. And we knew how the fashion industry was changing and evolving as it always does. It's fashion, it's not stagnant. But the show was. And the show was stagnant because of its own success. The networks didn't want to change it. So when Heidi and I left and went on to Amazon and created Making the Cut, it was a much broader view of fashion and a more realistic. But yes, you're quite right, it was narrowly defined on Project Runway. And as I said, it was a sample room.

[Imran Ahmed]

We'll be right back with more on the BoF podcast. It's interesting because I'm thinking back to your time at Parsons and through your experience in this 16 year run at Project Runway. And the industry has changed so much. When you're looking at the industry now from your vantage point, you know, what do you make of the fashion industry now? It's a completely different beast.

[Tim Gunn]

I won't say that it makes me happy. I look at luxury fashion and I think, do we really need this? For years I've said to people, look, you want to buy a $2,500 handbag, why don't you spend twelve hundred and fifty dollars, half that amount, and give what you didn't spend to charity? Give something back. So I look at luxury fashion and this is very personal because I can't stand spending a lot of money on clothes. I also can't stand fast fashion. I can't stand this cheap crap that is going to. Well, I don't even think people get a chance to wear out. They just buy, buy, buy, buy, buy. It's this kind of retail reflex that I object to so strongly. The last two semesters I've taught at Emerson College in Boston, and the course has been Innovation for Impact, Colon Fashion and Sustainability about how do we work on this issue. And the students have been enormously creative. And they all agree. I mean, they're probably also all consumers of fast fashion, but they also agree that it's extremely wasteful. And what's interesting about Massachusetts, where Boston sits, is that Massachusetts has put in place a law that makes it illegal to throw out clothing. You have to recycle it. Actually, not just clothing. Any textile exceptions are things that are soiled or damaged in some way, but otherwise you're going to get a serious fine. I think more cities, states, countries need to be looking at this. The trouble is fast Fashion is such an incredible business, but it's really. I mean, how do you deliver a skirt for $5? How does that happen? Unless you're using the cheapest materials available and metaphorically raping and pillaging your labor force? I mean, it can't happen legitimately. And when people say, oh, well, they make it up in volume. Well, if you're not making any money on an individual item, you don't make it up in volume. You lose more money with volume. But I don't. As I said earlier, I don't pretend to be an expert in any of this, but the fashion world, in my opinion, is a bit of a mess. And I'll say something else about it. This is in some ways a non sequitur, but it speaks to, in one way, the ever changing evolution of the industry and in other ways, the stagnant aspect of it. Let's look at the fashion show. It hasn't changed in over 100 years. It's just the same. And I think that's something that should be addressed as well. How do we view fashion? How do we experience it, and what are the venues? I fundamentally don't understand why we have to sit around for 90 minutes waiting for a show to begin, and then the whole thing's over in eight minutes, and then we repeat it over and over and over again. And, you know, Project Runway was part of that as it was making the cut at the same time. Heidi and I had a long discussion about the fashion show production and making the cut. And we made, I think, the responsible decision that that topic of the show is so big. It was a show in itself. So to spend a lot of time and energy on reconceiving it and re presenting it or presenting it in a wholly different way was probably not the most efficacious use of everyone's time and budget. And that may be why there's so much inertia with it now. I don't know.

[Imran Ahmed]

The other thing, big thing that's happened in the industry in the last decade or so is, I think back to the time when I started working in this industry, around 2006, 2007, and there was so much interest and excitement around emerging fashion businesses, you know, small fashion businesses. And now the industry is so dominated by the big mega brands. Right. It's so hard for an emerging fashion business not only to kind of get noticed, but also to survive and then thrive, you know?

[Tim Gunn]

Absolutely.

[Imran Ahmed]

What are your reflections on that, Tim? Because it seems to me like, you know, by. By leaving out this opportunity for us to discover new, you know, the next Donna Karan or Ralph Lauren, you know, we're really not paving a great future for our industry.

[Tim Gunn]

I told I'm in 1000% agreement completely and totally. And it's alarming because where is the future? The thing about making the cut, that was so. And you know, there are lots of things people can say about Amazon, but what was so valuable for the designers and not just the winner, but everyone who, who had contact with all the designers who were on the show. It was the Amazon mentorship. It was the opportunity to sell on Amazon. They were doing the manufacturing, the designers weren't and they were doing the sourcing. And it gave the designers the kind of broad reach that they would never have been able to achieve on their own. I mean, it just wouldn't have happened. And I have to also say I've never gone to a fashion show prior to being chair of the fashion department at Parsons. And then I felt a responsibility to, and I enjoyed them because so many of the graduates were showing. And I will say by 2010, 70% of the shows that I used to see didn't happen any longer because the designers businesses collapsed. And it was very sobering to realize how this winnowing was happening very swiftly. And as you said, the brands coming out on top were the behemoths, the big ones, the little sailboats couldn't do it. I recently saw, as recently this morning, an article about how the next big rage in fashion is going to be hand painted garments. What, how's that going to happen? And if it does, at what price point I thought, this is, this is crazy. I mean, I would say to Project Runway designers after they left, if you insist upon making every garment yourself, just be resigned to having a little boutique and not making any money. If you really want something big, you're going to have to let go and you're going to have to collaborate with a lot of people. And when people would ask me, and they still do, what happened to so and so? Why aren't they a big success? Well, as you know, any one of us, either individually or collectively, we can only be as successful as our ambitions and our resources allow us to be. Otherwise you can't achieve it. And as you were reflecting, and I'm with you, there was a time when the industry was very eager to support these young entrepreneurial designers. And I will also include Liz Claiborne in that. We were, well, we they before Bill McComb, the CEO, joined the former administration of Liz Claiborne. Was acquiring a brand, a quarter, which is why there were 48 brands. When Bill invited me to come, and Bill had only been there for a month. And the point was honorable. We're going to take these younger designers or fledglings, and we're going to support them. And the company did to a point where the company. Well, I think the company may have continued to do it, but let me also give you a context of when this happened or when Bill and I joined. It was 2007. So we're on the cusp of this economic down, downturn and retail calamity, and that's what happened. So the timing was such that we couldn't sustain supporting these fledgling brands.

[Imran Ahmed]

I was thinking about one of those fledgling brands yesterday. Two designers that you mentored at Parsons.

[Tim Gunn]

Jack McCullough, Proenza Schooler.

[Imran Ahmed]

Yeah. And Lazaro Hernandez. And I don't know if you saw the news, Tim, but they stepped down from their own brand after, I think, almost 20 years of building that brand from scratch. You know, all the ups and downs. And it looks like they're going to Loewe to become the creative directors of Loewe. And in order to do that, they clearly had to step away and step down from their brand. And so they're gonna be shareholders, but not the designers anymore. And like, for me, it was such a sign of the times because those guys, I was lucky to meet them very, very early on in their journey.

[Tim Gunn]

They're delightful, aren't they?

[Imran Ahmed]

They really are. And they, you know, they. One of the very few brands through thick and thin and Covid and ups and downs, and one bad investor to another bad investor. They somehow made it through.

[Tim Gunn]

Yeah.

[Imran Ahmed]

But now they're stepping back.

[Tim Gunn]

Thank you for telling me. I had no idea. I didn't know. And Loewe is very lucky to have them. I'll go back to my early days in the fashion department. Jack and Lazaro were among the sticking points, because when we introduced the senior year collections, Jack and Les came to me and said, we want to collaborate, we want to work together. And I said, fantastic. Wonderful. So the senior year faculty came to me and they said, this is outrageous. We're not permitting this. Why? Well, they can't work together. Then what they're only doing, they're doing one collection when they should be doing two. Wait a minute. You're not understanding something. First of all, they're doing the equivalent of two collections in terms of numbers. They're doing just as much work, but they're mind melding creatively. And conceptually. So this is where the industry's going. And this spells success. This is not cheating. This is not copping out. I'm still horrified by it. So I was their sole champion. And I will say this, too. There is a periodic review of the collections, or there was, and one period review was muslin or toilet, which. Whichever word you want to use. And I was there for Jack and Laz's muslin presentation. So it's all in undyed cotton. I. I shook up now. I was so overwhelmed by how beautiful it was and that raw fabric. And when it hit the Runway for the Parsons season Singer show, Julie Gilhart, who was then the fashion director of Barney's, which. Another fashion icon that's gone. Julie bought the collection in its entirety.

[Imran Ahmed]

She had such an eye. That was a time when those big retailers would really get behind young talents. You know, that's another big thing that's changed. Well, Tim, we're almost out of time, but, you know, I'm so grateful for the stories you've shared and the personal reflections and all the wisdom, but I wondered if we could conclude with a little bit of advice. First of all, I'm thinking back to the Tim Gunn that was encountering all of that hatred and bullying in school. For someone listening who's maybe going through that now in their own way, you know, what advice do you have to give to them on how to navigate that?

[Tim Gunn]

I will say, this life is a huge collaboration. We need other people. We're not intended to be solos. And no one should think, oh, I can deal with this and solve this myself. I was fortunate enough to not on my own, to really be. To have had a kind of intervention that allowed me to get help that I wouldn't have sought on my own. And I would say to anyone who's struggling, find someone you can speak to and share your thoughts with it. Maybe a teacher. It probably won't be a parent, but maybe it's the parent of a friend. Maybe it's a clergy member, maybe it's a coach, sports coach, but find someone to whom you can confide. And also, I don't want to sound like a Pollyanna, but it gets better. Things get better. They do. And when it comes to the fashion industry, it's so critically important to know what it is you have to say and to stay true to yourself to say it. And that's a maturation process. I'll point to Jack and Lazaro. They had a maturity level that was during my years at Parsons, was unequaled by other students. Most students are still in that embryonic stage of developing, even as seniors. But this is what Julie Gilhart saw. She saw a very mature collection. That's unusual. So know that there is an evolution to your voice and just trust and believe in it. And you know, I. So I might sound like the old fart that I am. I'm so disdainful of social media and how quickly it can extinguish people's hopes and dreams by just mean spirited people wanting to shout you down, believing yourself. Get rid of the toxic parts of your life and be, I'll say comfortable. I won't say happy. But be comfortable with who you are and what you have to say and say it when it's appropriate.

[Imran Ahmed]

I mean, that's a really poignant note to end on, Tim. Of course you also have to make it work.

[Tim Gunn]

Well, you have to make it work.

[Imran Ahmed]

Which is your iconic phrase from the show. But Tim, it's been a pleasure chatting. Thank you for your thoughts and for sharing all of your amazing stories.

[Tim Gunn]

Well, Imran, I have to tell you, you make this very easy because you're so user friendly and I feel as though we've known each other for years.

[Imran Ahmed]

Oh, well, that's very kind. Well, I hope we'll get to know each other in person at some point and maybe when I'm next in New York we can grab a coffee or something.

[Tim Gunn]

I would love that. That would be.

[Imran Ahmed]

It's been a pleasure chatting and thank you for all you did to inspire the dreams of so many young people to There was this business they call fashion.

[Tim Gunn]

Thank you so much.

[Imran Ahmed]

All right, the BoF podcast is edited and produced by Olivia Davies and Eric Brea. At Verizon, anyone can trade in their old phone for a new one on us with unlimited ultimate, which means everyone in your family could get a new phone and stay on your family plan. Keeping you close.

[Tim Gunn]

Hey mom, you seen my toothbrush?

[Imran Ahmed]

Yeah, I'm almost done with it. Oh, maybe too close. Trade in and additional terms apply. See verizon.com for details.

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